Beaumont Buildings is scarcely the place one would choose in which to spend a summer's day; for, though they reach unto the heavens, they are, like most of their kind, somewhat stuffy, the dust of the great city in all their nooks and corners, and the noise of the crowded life penetrates even to the topmost flat.
The agent, a man of fine imagination and unlimited descriptive powers, states that Beaumont Buildings is "situated in a fashionable locality"; but though Fashion may dwell close at hand, and its carriages sometimes roll luxuriously through the street in which the Buildings tower, the street is a grimy and rather squalid one, in which most of the houses are shops—shops of the cheap and useful kind which cater for the poor.
There is always a noise and a blare in Beaumont Street. The butcher not only displays his joints and "block ornaments" outside his shop, but proclaims their excellence in stentorian tones; and the grocer and fruiterer and fishmonger compete with the costermongers, who stand yelling beside their barrows from early morn to late and gaslit night.
The smells of Beaumont Street are innumerable, and like unto the sea shells for variety; and the scent of oranges, the pungent odor of fried fish, from the shop down the side street, and that vague smell familiar to all who dwell in the heart of London, rise and enter the open windows.
On the pavement and in the roadway, among the cabs and tradesmen's carts, the children play and yell and screech; and at night the song of the intoxicated as he rolls homeward, or is conveyed to the nearest cell by the guardian of the peace he is breaking, flits across the dreams of those in the Buildings who are so unfortunate as to sleep lightly; and they are many.
And yet in a small room of a small flat on the fourth floor of this Babel of noise and unrest sat Nell.
Eighteen months had passed since she made her sacrifice and left Wolfer House. The black dress in which she looked so slight, and against which the ivory pallor of her face was accentuated, was worn as mourning for Mrs. Lorton; for that estimable lady had genteelly faded away, and Nell and Dick were alone in this transitory world.
The sun was pouring through the open window, and Nell had dragged her chair into the angle of the wall just out of the reach of the hot beams, but still near the window, in the hope of catching something of the smoke-laden air which away out in the country must be blowing so fresh and sweetly.
As she bent over the coat which she was mending for Dick, she was thinking of one place over which that same air was at that moment wafting the scent of the sea and the flowers—Shorne Mills; and, as she raised her eyes and glanced at the triangular patch of sky which was framed by the roofs of the opposite houses, she could see the picture she loved quite distinctly, and almost hear—notwithstanding the intermezzo banged out by the piano organ in the street below—the songs and whistling of the fishermen, and the flap of the sails against the masts. Let the noise in and outside the Buildings be as great as it might, she could always lose herself in memories of Shorne Mills; and if sorrow's crown of sorrow be the remembering of happier days, such remembrance is not without its consolation.
When Dick and she had come to the Buildings, two months ago, Nell felt as if she should never get used to the crowded place and its multitudinous discomforts; but time had rendered life, even amid such surroundings, tolerable; and there were moments in which some phase of the human comedy always being played around her brought the smile to her pale face.